It was 32 years ago today that Edmund Blackadder graced our screens, which is a good an excuse as any to re-live his greatest ever comebacks, abuse, slights and slurs during his four-year reign over British TV.

Here’s the definitive list of Blackadder at his snidey best.

1. ‘Baldrick, does it have to be this way? Our valued friendship ending with me cutting you up into strips and telling the prince that you walked over a very sharp cattle grid in an extremely heavy hat?’

2. ‘Your brain for example- is so minute, Baldrick, that if a hungry cannibal cracked your head open, there wouldn’t be enough to cover a small water biscuit.’

3. ‘To you, Baldrick, the Rennaissance was just something that happened to other people, wasn’t it?’

4. ‘The girl is wetter than a haddock’s bathing costume.’

(Picture: BBC)

5. ‘Unfortunately most of the infantry think you’re a prat. Ask them who they’d rather meet, Squadron Commander Flasheart or the man who cleans out the public toilets in Aberdeen, and they’d go for Wee Jock Poo-Pong McPlop every time.’

6. (Blackadder is asked if he thinks Dr Johnson is a genius)

‘No sir, I do not. Unless, of course, the definition of ‘genius’ in his ridiculous Dictionary is “a fat dullard or wobblebottom; a pompous ass with sweatly dewflaps”.’

7. ‘There hasn’t been a war run this badly since Olaf the hairy, King of all the Vikings, ordered 80,000 battle helmets with the horns on the inside.’

(Picture: UKTV)

8. (In a telegram to Charlie Chaplin)

‘Congrats. Stop. Have discovered only person in world less funny than you. Stop. Name – Baldrick. Stop. PS. Please, please, please – stop.’

9. ‘Baldrick, you wouldn’t recognise a subtle plan if it painted itself purple and danced naked on a harpsicord singing “subtle plans are here again”.’

10. ‘Baldrick, in the Amazonian rain forests there are tribes of Indians as yet untouched by civilisation who have developed more convincing Charlie Chaplin impressions than yours.’

(Picture: REX_Shutterstock)

11. ‘I lost closer friends than “darling Georgie” the last time I was deloused.’

12. ‘You’re the worst cook in the entire world. There are amoeba on Saturn who can boil a better egg than you.’

13. ‘Baldrick may look like a monkey who’s been put in a suit and strategically shaved…’

14. ‘The eyes are open, the mouth moves, but Mr Brain has long since departed, hasn’t he, Perce?’

16. ‘Percy, far from being a fit consort for a Prince of the Realm, you would bore the leggings off a village idiot. You ride a horse rather less well than another horse would.

‘Your brain would make a grain of sand look large and ungainly and the part of you that can’t be mentioned, I am reliably informed by women around the court, wouldn’t be worth mentioning even if it could be.

‘If you put on a floppy hat and a funny codpiece, you might just get by as a fool, but since you wouldn’t know a joke if it got up and gave you a haircut, I doubt it.’

(Picture: BBC)

17. ‘You look like a bird who swallowed a plate.’

18. Blackadder: ‘Baldrick, I would like to say how much I will miss your honest, friendly companionship.’

Baldrick: ‘Thank you, Mr B.’

Blackadder: ‘But, as we both know, it would be an utter lie. I will therefore confine myself to saying simply, “Sod off and if I ever meet you again, it will be twenty billion years too soon.”‘